What Happens to Global Virtual Teams When a Pandemic Hits? Maintaining Normalcy and Stability with Disruption All Around

Each year, the Virtual Business Professional (VBP) program brings together professors and students from across the globe to engage in client projects. The VBP program of 2020 occurred from the beginning of March through the middle of April. In this article, we share how the COVID-19 pandemic affected VBP participants and their teams. We present post-project survey results (completed by 440 of 530 participants for an 83 percent response rate), professor comments, and student comments to demonstrate how VBP participants overcame many of the pandemic disruptions to work effectively in virtual teams, develop compassion and empathy for one another, and foster more global mindsets. Continue reading What Happens to Global Virtual Teams When a Pandemic Hits? Maintaining Normalcy and Stability with Disruption All Around

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Changing Motivation Theories and the Role of Communication in their Introduction to the Workplace

Dr. Marianna Richardson is an adjunct professor in the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University. She teaches courses in management communication and psychology for both undergraduate and graduate students. She received her doctorate from Seattle Pacific University. Her research interests lie in the areas of business communication and motivation theory. She is also the current editor of the Marriott Student Review, a peer-reviewed journal for business students. Continue reading Changing Motivation Theories and the Role of Communication in their Introduction to the Workplace

Maximizing Communication Methods to Promote Student Development and Success

Mollie Hartup, MBA, is Instructor in the Honors College, Coordinator of Communications, and YSU Magazine editor at Youngstown State University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication and Information with a focus on organizational communication at Kent State University. She has prior professional experience in television news and print journalism. Amy Cossentino, PhD, is Dean, Honors College, Youngstown State University. She has nearly 30 years of experience in higher education and currently also teaches in the Honors College and the Beeghly College of Education at YSU. Together, they have combined their interests and expertise in communication and education to develop a debriefing framework for schools and organizations to leverage shared experiences such as professional conferences. They are actively using and testing this framework in practice. Continue reading Maximizing Communication Methods to Promote Student Development and Success

Moving Students Away from Teacher-Centric Writing to Reader-Centric Business Communication

A research project I’m currently working on examines how new employees, mostly recent college grads, learn to write within an organization. One of my interview questions is, “Are you a different writer today than you were when you first joined the organization?” And the answer is usually, with few exceptions, yes. And many interviewees then tell a story about learning to write at their organization that goes something like this: when they first started, they would write e-mails comprised of long sentences–and even longer paragraphs–, multiple paragraphs of text without any guideposts for reading, and lots of general information targeted at no specific audience. They quickly realized, however, that their reader (a boss, a client) didn’t want all of that—instead, the reader wanted something short and to the point. Continue reading Moving Students Away from Teacher-Centric Writing to Reader-Centric Business Communication